Imortelle: Origins
by NPP6
Summary: 2 million years ago an advanced civilization discovered a secret - just like all the other pokemon, humans are capable of evolution. This discovery sparked a war that nearly destroyed the world. This is the story of that war. My first story, I'm planning on using this to introduce most of the characters I'll be using for the rest of my stories. M for violent and mild adult themes.
1. Prologue: The Dark Lines

I'm only going to say it once: I do not own Pokemon or any of the rights to Pokemon. This story is not affiliated with the Pokemon franchise, Nintendo, or Game Freak in any way.

* * *

The Dark Lines

Some of you will not know what I'm talking about. This story is not for you.

Others have already explained and defined this world. It is not my place to do so again. I am simply here to enlighten those who do know this world of things unseen that have shaped it almost as long as it's masters.

In Dialga's ultimate creation there is a flaw. A corruption. There is a point where time itself splits in two major directions. In one direction time fragments, fractures and ends, the threads blackening and cracking. There are exceptions to this however, there are a few – a very few – timelines where time and the world survive without our intervention, but they are very few and far between. In the other direction, all the timelines are bright and fluid, healthy and intact.

This does not merely apply to time however. Space ends as well. Some threads of time continue on through the barrier of space. All of these are black and cracked. This is why these black threads and vanishing points in space have been given a name.

Endings.

That is what they are, the ending of all existence in that combination of time and space, that version of the world we live in. Thus far all attempts to heal and repair the Endings have been met with disaster and tragedy.

I am not here to tell you about the Endings however, although I may sometime and someplace. I am here to tell you about us. Let's begin with the healthy half of time, the part after the splitting where all timelines are alive. The ones where existence continues on beyond the view of myself or any other.

Those are our timelines. The ones where we have interfered or intervened in the direction events were taking.

We are the Immortelle.

* * *

I know, it doesn't seem to tie in to Pokemon much, but bear with me here, this is really the back stories for my characters, individual Pokemon will appear more often as the story progresses.


	2. The Origin and History of the Immortelle

The Origin and History of the Immortelle in Brief

Hundreds of thousands of years ago humans first walked upon this world. There was already life here, much of it, and it was beautiful and flourishing. And then something happened, an event known as the Shattering because of the way it splits Dialga's timeline. Humans evolved. Not evolution as we think of it, we were already sentient and had mastery of fire and stone. Evolution as it can only exist in this marvelous world.

I am told that today there are many who would draw lines, saying that humans are better than pokemon. I have also seen pokemon who hate humans or consider them to be lesser being than pokemon. Even the best people I have met say simply that humans and pokemon are equal, similar, without difference, the same, or just friends. Not once since the day our civilization fell has someone stumbled upon the truth of the matter.

Humans _are_ pokemon.

I say that nobody has stumbled upon this truth. I choose my words carefully in this. The concept that humans are pokemon has been shared throughout the ages with a select few. The revered Professor Samuel Oak is one of these few, and in a bout of ironic humor he actually programmed his pokedexes so that if you look up entry #0 in the national pokedex you will find the trainer information of the pokedex's owner.

Given the fact that the Shattering coincides with our rise, I would have to assume that the realization by someone at some point that humans are pokemon is necessary for the survival of existence.

Humans were separated near their creation. Around the creation of what is now known as the Lake Trio, some humans were affected severely.

Azelf, Uxie, Mesprit. They were so young for their powers.

Too young it turns out.

They weren't able to completely control them and accidentally gifted some with knowledge, willpower, and emotion far beyond the rest, and so while most of humanity was figuring out the finer points of fire, our ancestors were de-bunking quantum physics. Under the instruction of Arceus the affected were gathered together. They formed the world's first human civilization, an absolute utopia, humans and pokemon living and existing together (this was before he realization) they created a vast empire, completely in tune with the world, technology beyond belief, marvels of arts, literature, and engineering, enormous places of study, sciences thousands of years ahead of anything existent today.

But irony and fate can be cruel. For every light there is a shadow cast.

For every utopia, there must be a dystopia.

There was such a place, on the far side of the world. It originated as a colony, or more accurately a prison. It was where we sent our criminals. It was also a hive and breeding ground for an infectious evil. Eventually this place was all but forgotten to us, we preferred to think about more pleasurable things, and then one day we opened our eyes and found that they had taken independence, broken ties with us, and even swayed some of our other cities and colonies to do the same. We had no quarrel, how could we, no word came from them, they left us alone, we had no idea what was going on inside this corrupted kingdom.

Then came the day when one of our greatest scientists found a special circumstance that created a heretofore unseen and strange anomaly. Under the correct conditions _humans could evolve_. Some could even learn to use pokemon powers in their human state if the circumstances were right. Together these two facts formed the basis for a theory that was rapidly tested and proven and that shook out world to its core: Humans are pokemon. Some particularly kind-hearted soul remembered our "brothers" on the far side of the world, and quickly a diplomatic/scientific research team of 50 scientists, ambassadors, engineers, writers, and scribes was formed and dispatched to share this important new finding about the nature of human beings with them.

13 came back. 7 of them were even alive at the time. 3 survived their wounds long enough for the war to arrive.

The rest of them were received in varying amounts in our other cities and colonies.

We later found out that they were still alive and conscious when they were torn apart. Most of them. Two succeeded in dying before their dismemberment, one bit off his tongue and drowned in his own blood, and the other used the stone wall behind him to sharpen the edges of his manacles to the point where he was able to slit his own wrists with them.

All of this was told to us by the ones that were permitted to survive until the war took them.

They attacked us with impossible strength, their entire empire was based on the belief of humanity's dominance over pokemon. We had just become the ultimate threat to them.

Where our society was largely academic, theirs was very much militaristic. They had weapons we could have never believed possible, not that we couldn't believe in the device itself, indeed in most cases it was simplistic, nearly primitive, and we didn't even have to see it to know exactly how it worked. No, what we couldn't imagine was anybody actually being vile enough to use them.

When we realized that we couldn't possibly win, we settled into our only available course of action. We had no weapons so we became them. 2563 of the applicants were able to pass the requirements for induced evolution. We became soldiers in a world that had never needed them. We fought the first war. In our evolved state we were powerful, more powerful than we could have possibly comprehended beforehand. But we were also weak. We lost so many to their own weaknesses…pride, greed, laziness, vanity, lust, hate, naiveté…so many, so many. I still remember their names, all of them. I have hidden away the device we used to store them, erected a memorial to them, to us. When we realized exactly what this war was, then we knew…the war was not about dominance, or justice, or even about survival. Our fight became the eradication of that evil that threatened to envelop the world.

Ultimately we won, but then came the harder realization. Our enemy _had_ been our brothers all along. The seed of evil that they possessed had ultimately come from us. They were a part of us that fell off, and ultimately it was realized that our own civilization was flawed, straight to the core. And so we, the survivors of the first war, went about with our final mission. We erased, eradicated, razed, and destroyed any and all evidence that our civilization had ever existed. And so no, there are no memorials to our fallen civilization, only to those 2562 brave soldiers who gave everything for our survival. And my name is there as well.

There were those among us, soldiers, who survived the war, but the people on that list, the people who owned those names, they died when they went into the evolution induction chamber.

Once we finished the destruction of our civilization, we gathered together in the cave of origins, so that when we died we had that much less distance to travel before our spirits moved on.

And then we discovered Fate's cruelest trick yet.

We must have broken some great cosmic law set down by whatever power brought Arceus into being, because truly nothing short of such a transgression could ever have possibly earned us this destiny. That was all we could think at the time. When we found out. A few years after the destruction of our cities, somebody observed that a few of us seemed to be getting younger. We of course laughed at this, and then realized the cost of our evolution. We were as the legends. We had become legends. And like them we could not grow, could not sicken.

Could not die.

And so we were forced to watch as the last of our people, our friends, our families, one by one withered, grew old, sickened, and died. And we could not follow them.

Because we are Immortelle.

Eternal. Everlasting. Unchanging.

We had already erased everything else, we were the last remains of a fallen empire. We could not die, and the one time one of us tried to kill herself, the pokemon intervened. They saw it as a gift, and in time we came to as well. Immortality is a curse. But a second chance, that is the greatest of gifts. And we now had a second chance, this time we could fix things, do it right. But first we would need to fade into the background and bide our time. We would have to allow the humans who were just now beginning to enter the life of their race, the ones who had been unable to function and develop with our society in place, to take over. These humans who hadn't yet seen war, violence, or evil. We would have to let them develop and grow into this new world we had left wide open for them. We could guide them, a few, when necessary, staying behind the scenes invisible to most, quietly making sure that these new humans did not repeat our mistakes.

There were two final actions we had to take before our disappearance though, and I believe these may have made all the difference in how effective we can be without interfering directly. I may be the most active of the Immortelle, but even I know that the world is not yet ready to know of our existence.

First, we sealed our names. We each remember our names, and each other's, but we do not reveal these names, they are the only things that we have kept of our original lives besides the mew amulets that mark us as Immortelle. The amulets serve another function, but I can only pray that it never needs to be fulfilled.

The other thing we did was start a rumor. We passed to the pokemon the duty of keeping our story alive. Soon it spread throughout the world, all pokemon knowing who we were. And then the fact became rumor, the rumor became story, the story became fable, the fable became legend, and our legend faded into obscurity, taking our civilization with it. But faded is not gone, and when the sun sets or the moon rises and pokemon parents are shuffling their children off to bed, in nearly every forest, hill, river, island, ocean, mountain, field, lake, city, farm, cave, tunnel, and haven you can stand in nearly any place, and if you're quiet and listen for it, you can hear the young ones and their parents going through the nightly ritual of getting the children to sleep. And if you wait long enough in one of these places pokemon inhabit, you'll hear;

"Mommy, tell us a story, please."

"What one would you like to hear?"

"You know, our favorite, the one that always makes us feel safe and happy."

"Ah, that one."

"Yes Mommy, please, tell us the story of the Immortelle."

But maybe I flatter myself, it's possible that nobody remembers us and that you've never heard of us. Who knows, maybe I'm completely wrong and it was out of context when I heard that conversation taking place in a warm den on a stormy night as I stood outside in the rain and listened to those same words I wrote all those hundreds of thousands of years ago pour from the mouth of the cave were dozens of pokemon of all sizes, ages, type, and evolutionary stage sat around a bonfire stoked by a Dragonite and a Charizard with wood collected by a Rhyperior and a Tyranitar, kindled by the joint efforts of a Scyther and a Pinsir, and kept dry by the combined ingenuity of a Seviper and a Zangoose.

But I can tell you that the poachers who had been chasing this group of pokemon around the valley in question, even going so far as to collapse the entrance, and who were about to end their game of cat and mouse, would have succeeded that night with their nets and their guns, and their cages and their trucks. Not one of those pokemon would have had another free night, I saw the future, witnessed their fates, read their destinies. I could tell you all of them.

And when I had seen the future that I would be leaving them to I intervened. So yes, maybe I am flattering myself, and it was nothing more than a particularly well written bedtime story to those young ones. But those poachers definitely know that I'm no myth. And something tells me that there are plenty of pokemon, even humans, who have heard our bedtime story and know its truth too. And frankly as long as a single pokemon, even one, remembers us and believes in us, and has hope that we're out there, I'd say we're doing our job.

Because we can't be public, but we'll always follow our hearts. We'll always do what we can. We failed our world, so now we protect yours so that you can have a chance, and maybe, just maybe, then we won't have failed.

On a final and personal note because the rest aren't necessarily the same as me: I am immortal, unchanging, Immortelle. The rest of the world is not. I can't have a home, or a close family, and so all I have is the world and everything in it. And I will protect it.

I am Immortelle.

I am the sixth.

I am -

But if you look for me, you will find me by only one name

- The Boy in the Leather Jacket


	3. 6

**6**

_I still remember it like it was yesterday..._

I had a cousin on the ambassadorial mission, a distant one – I can't even remember her name – but it still hit my parents hard. They had been against the mission, I sometimes wonder if they had known just how bad of an idea it was...

I was seventeen at the time, I was one of the scientists working on the evolution project. Or rather, I was an intern on the project whose opinion was highly valued by the head researcher. I actually found one of the evolution points – the specific parts of Human genetic coding that provide for the conditions that must be met for humans to evolve into their next stage.

Because of my involvement with the project, my name was automatically entered into the pool of candidates for evolution induction. The rest of my family – my brother, sister, and parents – all volunteered as soon as the project was made public. Amazingly, all of them passed every one of the tests we threw at them. Due to a clerical error, my fourteen-year-old brother was somehow listed in our records as sixteen, so he was legally allowed to be a part of the project if he had parental consent. This later led to several important events, but I had no way of knowing this at the time...

We were each assigned a number, these numbers were the order in which our evolution would be induced, and therefore also correlated to when we would evolve. My parents were never exactly the most responsible, and though they tried and did their best, many times while we were growing up they seemed to forget that we were children. My sister and I took matters into our own hands with our brother, tying him to his bed and locking him in his room while he was asleep to make sure he wouldn't be able to make it to the evolution induction. My sister even went so far as to steal the ID that would allow him to use the evolution chamber so that he wouldn't be able to evolve himself later on. I have to laugh looking back on this event, knowing that the ID would later save the lives of two good men, seven close friends, my worst enemy, and my best friend. At the time the only life we were trying to save was my brother's.

The evolution chamber worked. Exactly the way it was supposed to. The way we had designed it to. Maybe that should have tipped me off to the fact that something was wrong. The attack started around twelve, the city was put to siege. We were the soldiers who were supposed to protect it and we could do nothing. We had had almost no training, most of us had absolutely no idea how to fight, most of us had never even seen a death induced by violence. But far too soon though it was, the war was upon us.

Somehow we managed to push them back from the ones who still had to evolve, I guess we thought that somehow we would figure out what we needed to do once we had all evolved.

I will not lie to you. We did not win that day. We managed to push the enemy out of the city, but their weapons, and the fact that now for the first time we were seeing actual killing, many of us simply froze, unable to do anything. Then we got lucky. A traveler and some pokemon who he was traveling with joined the fight on our side and were able to take out the enemy's command station.

We lost over a hundred of us that day...it took us a long time to figure out how they knew where we were and when to attack. I still find it hard to believe that all that time he was...

They had destroyed the machine during the battle, and stole the primary circuit board, making it impossible for us to rebuild it, at the time we thought that their only objective was to make sure that we couldn't evolve any more humans. Well, at least we were partly right.

This had been the first battle in our war, the second took place over the next few months, as we trained, attempted to become ready for battle, and recovered. But the enemy had other plans for us, and over the next three months we were targeted, not us personally, that quickly became to difficult to pull off. They targeted our identities, our families, homes, jobs, friends. Everything.

A girl I was partnered with for combat training was the one who finally figured out what we needed to do, shortly after her entire family – right down to a second cousin that she didn't even know she had – was brutally wiped out. They were targeting who we were, we needed to give them nothing to shoot at. We needed to give up ourselves, our names, our identities, everything. And so we no longer used our names, instead using the system of numbers that we had been given when we evolved. This system was not without its own dangers though, as we quickly found that our numbers were also our weaknesses...

And then I was set on a path that changed the course of this first war, which was ultimately sparked by an event that changed everything about who I was, and redefining who I am.

– The Boy in the Leather Jacket


	4. 0

**0**

_I know that the war really started earlier, at least officially it did. But we all have a day when the war really started for us. For most of us it's different, usually the day that the fight became personal. For me, it's that day. The day it all began._

_The day I first shed blood…_

I find it highly ironic that I started out the day trying to save a life, specifically my youngest brother's. My other brother, my twin and I were just putting the finishing touches on the series of locks, bindings, and traps that would keep the kid in place long enough that he would miss the event. Our parents had already left, by the time they found out what we had done, it wouldn't matter anymore, the kid would be safe.

They could do whatever they wanted to us. Whoever "they" happened to be. We had decided this together, we would be the ones to take any punishment that our parents, social group, or the government decided to dish out. I even went so far as to steal his medallion. Once that was done we started out the door. Or at least I did, my brother stopped me in the hallway.

"Um… I'm not really sure how to put this…" he started, obviously nervous, even…embarrassed? That couldn't be right, my brother never got embarrassed. Ever. I mean come on, we weren't exactly the richest family growing up, and we were twins, and well… hot water was expensive… let's just leave it at 'we were both very familiar with the physical anatomy and psychology of the opposite gender.' Besides, he was a scientist, or at least a science student. Something was definitely up.

"What is it?"

"Well, it seems that there was a slight error on _your_ application form as well, they just notified me… it seems a rather important question didn't get answered…"

"Spit it out, what is this 'rather important question?'"

He turned bright red. Okay, hold up, something's definitely wrong with this picture. My brother, the one guy at school who the girls had trusted to guard the locker room when there was a rapist targeting schoolgirls, and who had therefore gotten drafted to temporarily be let out of classes and required to stay in said locker room for the majority of the day – _particularly when the girls were in there and quote "vulnerable"_ – and not even batted an eye, merely requesting that he be allowed to take in a small table so that he could continue studying and that he be given verification that not one of the girls felt uncomfortable with his presence, was blushing. BLUSHING! The only time I had ever seen him blush was when he actually caught the rapist in question and had to request that the girl he had just saved cover up. He had made the papers for that. Actually, I think that that incident is what first brought him to the attention of the lab he worked at…but that's beside the point.

One thing I knew and knew well, if my twin brother was blushing, then there was a very serious reason. And I would probably wind up at _least_ as red as he was before this discussion was over.

"Is it…" He stopped, looked down, took a breath, and looked up, having regained his composure. "Is it _that_ time of month?"

…

Oh. Well. Yup. Hmm. Yeah, I'm pretty sure that I was at least two shades redder than he had been. I can honestly say that having to be asked _that_ question by my twin brother was the most embarrassing thing that had happened to me since I was twelve and our parents had decided that the morning of my first period was a good time to give us both _the talk_. Together.

That was the only other time in my life I had seen my brother embarrassed. It took us a week before we were able to look at each other straight. It was also somehow the first hint we had that our parents might not actually have the best idea of what they're doing. They quickly acted to firmly cement that impression in our minds, and a week later had made a rather large show of "subtly" providing the both of us with inordinate amounts of…various contraceptives. I did the math once, and it turned out that we would have taken a year to work through them only if we were active at a rate of eight to nine times a day.

I think that that was when we sort of took over the raising of our younger sibling from our parents. When they were actually surprised six months later by the fact that we hadn't gone through our…supply…umm…I mean…

…

Let me make one thing abundantly clear, neither of us ever did anything like that.

Six months after receiving our respective ten-year supplies we hadn't even opened them, except for me going on the pill just in case I was… attacked. The fact that they were still unopened didn't even register with our folks, they were surprised that there were any left.

That was the point where we became the official contacts for our little brother on his school records and for any of his extracurricular activities. It was also the point where we officially decided that _we_ were raising the kids, and not the folks. About a week later everyone else we knew seemed to catch on. To be perfectly honest I think they were actually somewhat relieved.

But I'm getting off topic again. Returning to the moment at hand:

"Oh. Well. Yup. Hmm. Yeah. Awkward." At this point it struck me just how intelligent I was sounding. I gulped. I think I might have giggled. I tried to remember for the life of me when my last time was, I swear, even my memories were blushing. Then…got it, about a week and a half ago. "Umm… No… No, no, I had my period about a week and a half ago."

He looked relieved, "Alright, I'll just send this paperwork off with the Pidgey then." He made a note, checked a box, signed his name on another page, and handed it to the messenger Pidgey on our way out.

As we were walking away from the house, his step was noticeably lighter than usual, and I amended my earlier opinion, he was definitely relieved not to have to tell his twin sister that she was ineligible for the immortelle program because she was… sexually capable at the time.

About halfway to the event he suddenly stopped. He patted his pockets. He muttered a light curse, and turned around to run back to the house only to find me holding his medallion out to him, the number six prominently displayed, with what he later described as an amused smirk on my face. He took his ID Medallion from me almost sheepishly, "Thanks Sis, you're a lifesaver."

"No problem, even if I hadn't brought that one I snagged the kid's just in case he woke up too soon."

He laughed at that, "Always the overachiever."

* * *

I remember the feeling of waking up. My brother was standing over me, talking to me. Oh, that's right I can hear things. I turned the sound back on. Then blinked and yawned, and then decided to pay attention to said sound.

"Sis, you okay?" my brother, worrying as he always did. My twin.

"Well, most things seem to work right, although I do wish I weren't so short at the moment."

One of the technicians interrupted, "Uh-Oh, disorientation, we'd better get the docs to check her out."

This set my brother laughing, which got him some strange looks. In answer he pointed to a screen. Watch her brain activity, she fell asleep. She's always like this in the morning." He reached down to help me up and out of the evolution chamber.

"So should we mark subject number five down as a success then?"

My brother smiled, "She survived. Whether she evolved or not that's a success in my book."

"Alright, who's next, bring in number six."

"No need," my brother tossed his medallion down on the table. "You're on your own for this one guys."

The lab seemed to be divided between those who were surprised that my brother was one of the subjects and those who seemed surprised that he was as far down the line as number six.

"…Wait, you're Subject Six? Why?"

"Because the HMICs wouldn't let me go any earlier and even I'm not cocky enough to try this thing out on myself with nobody at the controls." As if that explained everything, which, many were surprised to find, it did.

I on the other hand had snorted at his comment. Head Morons In Charge, one of my brother's favorite acronyms. How he ever managed to get any influence anywhere – or keep his job at the labs for that matter – was a mystery far beyond me.

My reaction seemed to remind the other people present of my existence, and I was quickly bundled out of the room, there was a full medical examination, plenty of tests, and then they declared me healthy and that was that. I was now one of the Immortelle, the supersoldiers who were going to save the world.

Yeah right.

I was a 17-year-old girl who had absolutely no idea what she had just gotten herself into.

* * *

There were about nine of us in the room. My brother had final managed to shout down a team of seven doctors to get clearance to return to the EI Chamber. That was when we heard the first shots fired, the first explosion. All of us were on guard instantly, knowing that this meant that the enemy had shown up to stop that project. That they were here for us.

But they weren't. The weapons that were discharging weren't directed at us, but at the crowd in the courtyard outside. And a man in a white uniform stood atop what we would later discover was termed a Rhyperion-VI Battle Tank. And he was monologue-ing. Then I heard what he was saying. It's not really important anymore, and all that I really remember is that he was talking about the slaughter and blaming _us_ while firing into the crowd.

And then a little girl stepped forward. I recognized her, she lived not far from us. She called him on the carpet, talked about how we were going to save everybody and help people and why did he have to be such a big meany. She called him a bully.

He just smiled that sickening smile of his. That was when I decided that he was my personal enemy. What clinched it was when she mentioned me, said that if people like me were going to become Immortelle, then we couldn't possibly be bad. She used her special nickname for me of course, so nobody knew quite who she was referring to.

After she finished, he committed what I consider to be one of his most unforgivable acts. He had the main cannon brought to bear on the little girl and asked her if she thought her "precious heroes" could really save her. There was no way we could. We were on the sixth floor, we simply just couldn't get down there in time. He was toying with her, taunting us, all the while turning us into villains. And then he gave the order to fire.

I saw red.

My war began.

I threw everything I knew about what exactly would happen out the window. If I couldn't even save one little girl, then there was no point in my ever evolving in the first place.

I jumped.

I was told later that this was a rallying point, the signal that was needed for us to start fighting back. I couldn't really care less.

I managed to save her, the one person in the world who truly believed in me at that moment. Not just in us, but in me. Personally. That was all that mattered.

When the smoke cleared, the image that was there must have been truly terrifying. I was standing there, in front of the girl, most of my clothing in tatters except for what essentially amounts to a slip, loose blonde hair blowing in the wind, and a look in my eyes that was apparently enough to make more than one of my enemies soil themselves. The man on top of the tank took one look at me and jumped down, slamming the hatch on the roof behind him. Approximately two seconds later the rear of the tank burst open and a Pigeot flew out and took to the skies screaming.

I was later told that the attack I used is called Draco Meteor. I didn't really care at the time, or even know that I was using an attack, I was just doing to the tanks what they had done to the crowd.

The people were cheering, the enemy had been defeated, their commander was running, and all it had taken was a single Immortelle.

Then the real attack hit.

Turns out that man in the white uniform, Karkroiv, hadn't been running. He'd been delivering the shocking news to his reinforcements that he actually _did_ need them.

I did many things on that day that I am not proud of. But the one thing that I am proud of, the one thing that kept me going, is that I did manage to achieve something. Not repelling the enemy, because frankly we still lost. There's a reason that it was named the "Zero Massacre."

No the one thing that kept me from going home that day and slitting my own throat was that I managed to return a favor. I returned a favor to a little girl who had stood by me, and I stood by her. I never left her. She had a piece of my shirt tied over her eyes, and cotton from the hem of my skirt stuffed in her ears, and her arms were tight around my neck. She asked begged me, "Don't let me go. Don't leave me." I told her I wouldn't. And I didn't.

That was my victory, at the end of the day I had managed to protect the little girl who now meant so much to me. I found out she had been orphaned when the tanks fired into the crowd. The adoption papers were signed and filed by the end of the next day. So that I could keep protecting her.

I will not speak for the others, we are all different, and few of us can actually be called noble at this point.

I am immortal, unchanging, Immortelle. But I am also a protector, a guardian, and the things I watch over are not. And so in the end all I am left with are the people I care about, for the all-too-short time I have them. And they move on while I do not. And more come. And my heart breaks with every death that I cannot prevent.

But there are those deaths I can prevent. The endings I can avoid. And so though they may change, all I have is my family. All I am left with are the people who are important to me. And I will protect them.

I am Immortelle.

I am the fifth.

I am –

But if you look for me, you will find me by only one name

– The Girl in the Ivory Dress

* * *

**A/N: Yes, I used a completely different character for the narration and POV in this chapter. Get used to it, I'm going to be doing it a lot. Another thing you should probably watch out for is the timeline. So far there has been some semblance of linear progression in this story. I cannot guarantee that this will continue. As the story progresses I may wind up doing entire chapters that cover already established events from a different POV. This is because this is not a book, but rather a legend. A Chronicle if you must. It involves a lot of characters, doing a lot of things at the same time. They would each have their own stories, and their own version of the same events. Anyway, if you've gotten this far then thank you for reading.**

**- NPP6**


	5. Hero

**Hero**

_Everyone has moments that will stay with them for the rest of their lives. Those of us who are lucky have the good ones outweigh the bad. I'm not that lucky. Most of the memories that I will never be able to simply let fade away are not pleasant._

_But there are some…_

I still remember the day I first met her, it took me a few months to realize it, but I was pretty much a lost cause from day one.

She was in the market, I know, cliché, but still. She had been targeted by a group of thugs who specifically went after girls who matched her description, one of them pretending to be a "Deal Guide" who would take her around and show her the best deals on every item she needed. He would then proceed to lead her down a back alley where the rest of his crew were waiting to rob her blind. Today they had targeted a girl about my age who seemed a little lost in the crowds. I noticed, but honestly didn't bother to step in. nobody in their right minds would have sent her out for much more than a single item, not in this part of town anyway. She wouldn't have much money on her to lose, she would hopefully learn a valuable lesson, and these guys didn't actually do any physical harm to their targets, so she wouldn't be hurt.

Still, something was nagging at me, so I followed them at a distance, even at thirteen I was fairly good at being able to go unnoticed, and I decided to take the "higher road" for good measure. Good thing too, because what I found was not a pretty sight. It turns out that a rival gang from another district had moved in and taken over the blind robbery scam. Ordinarily not a problem and I wouldn't have interfered. The trouble is that they hadn't just taken it over, they had also decided to take it a little bit farther.

Aside from the jerk who I had followed here, the short fat dude who he was currently conversing with (body language suggested that the girl couldn't hear what exactly they were saying), and the two cloaked bruisers flanking them, there were twelve guys guarding the seven girls gagged and tied up at the back of the alley. Two of the girls still had their clothes on.

It took me a few seconds to figure out what was going on, apparently it did Her too, because she didn't start making a fuss until another guy came out of the tent that until now I had failed to notice due to its being hidden by the second corner at the back of the alley. He was dragging an eighth girl who was still tied up and threw her into the five who I now realized I was too late to completely save. In our combined defense, we were both very naïve, as a result of our – ironically – nearly oppositely sheltered upbringings. It was right then that I did something very stupid, something that I had been avoiding trying to do for years, something that would define me for the rest of my life.

I decided to be a hero.

I couldn't help it, I had to do something, and for all of my intelligence, running for help just didn't seem like an option right now. Especially not with the guy who had just come out of the tent switching places with one of the guards, who was now reaching for one of the two girls. The new girl's scream was quickly cut off as the bodyguards bound and gagged her, but it gave me the time I needed to come up with a semblance of a plan as I quickly shifted into what my sister once affectionately called my "Analysis Mode".

The roof I was on was old, the ceramic tiling brittle and in some places broken and sharp. Appropriate shard: found, distance to Target: 15 feet, Tailwind: Check, 15 mph, Solar Positioning: Optimal, Rebound: Located, Communication Relay Pole Tensile Strength: 250 ppi, Distance: 5 feet, Distanc to ground: 15 feet, Shock Factor: Unknown. Conclusion: Success.

And thus I effectively ended what little semblance of a life I had with one well-timed kick.

I snagged my foot under a broken tile and put it in the air in front of me. Then I jumped up and used a spin kick to propel the tile shard forward and down. The man whose turn had just come was reaching for one of the girls when a six-inch shard of ceramic suddenly stabbed into his right arm, severing his radial artery and spraying both him and the girl with his blood. The vast majority of the people below quickly looked to see where the projectile had come from, and found themselves blinded by the sunset that was silhouetting the building I had been standing on.

I meanwhile had used some conveniently placed communication relay poles to rebound across the alley, my fall being broken by another rather conveniently place object, specifically the landing pad that I had just created with a six-inch ceramic shard. It really just wasn't this guy's day.

I quickly proceeded to slice through one of the girl's bindings with another piece of tile I had picked up off the roof, and handed it to her so that she could free the other girls. It was at about this point that my entire plan fell completely to pieces.

I would like to point out here that I consider myself to be very smart. I mean come on, I only had like two seconds to come up with a plan, and it had worked, the girls were freeing themselves from the ropes, and the guy who had been about to rape one of them was currently on the ground in serious pain attempting to keep from bleeding out. There was just that _one_ little detail that I had entirely overlooked.

I had _absolutely no idea_ how I was going to get these girls out of this alley past sixteen guys.

I calculated my odds as about sixteen to one. In other words I was screwed. Then the bodyguards' cloaks fell, revealing them to be a Machamp and a Gallade, and I amended that assessment. I was now _royally_ screwed.

The short guy who I now realized was in charge of this operation stepped forward. "Well, well, what do we have here, a little hero?"

"Nah, they're all too busy with people who know what they're doing to play at being janitors right now, I'm afraid putting you down got delegated to me." To be perfectly honest I was just as surprised as they were at the words coming out of my mouth. Then I realized that I was the one who had just said that and my current status upgraded to shock. Also for some reason I couldn't seem to get that incessant smirk off of my face.

The expression on Fatty's face instantly shifted from amusement to irritation. "You two. Eliminate him."

"I don't really think that's necessary, he won't be talking to anybody." I was almost as shocked to hear one of the two guys who had just been ordered to kill me speaking in my defense as I was at the things I had just found myself saying. Almost.

I think that at this point I had entered a mental state that can only be described as a perpetual suspension of disbelief.

"Oh, and why won't he be talking exactly?"

"Simple, the guy's got too much to lose. He's supposed to be some sort of genius, and he spends most of his time trying to help his family stay afloat. He and his sister basically have to raise their kid brother, their parents are complete imbeciles." Wait a second. I knew that voice. Only one person I knew could successfully mock everyone present while simultaneously playing up their intelligence for listening to him. I knew this kid. I just hadn't recognized him out of uniform.

He went to my school. He was the captain of our primary sports team. Heck, he was the Student Body President! I had no idea that he was involved in something like this…wait…no…it was completely out of character, why would he…Jules.

His little sister.

I glanced over and sure enough, one of the girls who still had her clothes on was indeed the sister of the man currently trying to save my life. Well, at least that explained that. He was just trying to keep his sister from getting used, probably trying to make sure that the other girls at least survived their ordeal.

"He probably was just feeling left out, just wanted in on some of the _action_. He just doesn't know how to say that he _wants some_." I almost rolled my eyes at the hints he was dropping me. Subtle this guy was not. But still, I appreciated the thought that he was trying to save me, especially considering that we had never considered ourselves to be friends.

An idea seemed to occur to Fatty. At least that's what his feral grin told me. "Alright, we let him live. In fact, we let him have one of the girls too. Yo-"

He was suddenly cut off when the tied-up girl next to him managed to perform a double jump kick that ended in his stomach.

His bodyguards were quick to react, the Machamp yanking her off his boss and holding her by the neck while the Gallade brought one of his elbow blades to her throat. The Machamp helped his boss off the ground with his free hand. The evil grin had again been replaced by rage.

"You girly, just bought yourself a world of infinite pain and…" Oh boy. The evil grin was back. "I am going to do something to you so terrible that you will never recover from it. You could live a thousand years and it will still haunt your every nightmare (I have to laugh as I write this, the idiot had absolutely no idea exactly how right he was, and ironically how wrong. I still feel the effects of that night every day, even now, millions of years later, but this definitely didn't go the way he intended)."

_Well,_ I thought,_ if I'm going to play the hero, might as well act like it…_ "Excuse me Short, Fat, and Brain-dead, but aren't we forgetting about somebody here?" Yeah, I know, cliché. In my defense, the only thing on my mind at the moment was saving that girl. Again, I know, cliché.

Now his evil-feral-grin-smile-thing reached literally from ear to ear and was legitimately starting to creep me out. "Oh no, not at all hero, in fact you play a vital role in my little plan. Let me tell you in exact detail what I'm going to do to you." I think I may have actually rolled my eyes there, I have to wonder if this guy realized that he had all but stuck a label on his forehead reading 'cliché stereotypical villain.' He even had the freaky smile down pat. Some of his thugs noticed this as well and seemed to get a little nervous, because if he was a cliché villain, then there was only one way that this could end, because let's face it; I had already filled the role of hapless hero perfectly.

"I am going to give the girl here a choice, a choice between her life and yours. You, quite obviously, are very much an innocent in all of this, and she won't fight you as much as she would one of us. She won't want to hurt someone who is obviously no more in control of the situation than she is. And when you two are found unconscious and in a _very_ compromising position, and a simple medical test confirms appearances, she will be faced with a choice, either tell everyone she was willing and utterly disgrace herself, or tell everyone she wasn't which will lead to your exile or execution. Either way, you both lose, and I win. You won't even be able to reveal what actually happened because it will only make people wonder how long you two had been going if you had time to come up with _this_ story. Nobody would believe you and you'd only find yourselves worse off than before. What's more, neither one of you will take the only way out and abandon the other to their fate because you'll still be clinging to your misplaced ideal that somehow something will save you." Cue evil laugh.

I swore. Well, _there's_ the difference between this jerk and your run-of-the-mill baddie, his plan would actually work. There was nothing either of us could do. But there was one person who could seriously change things. I looked him in the eye as he and another thug advanced on me.

"Jonah, don't do this. It will destroy everything you've done. You're only protecting Jules, I can respect that. Don't destroy yourself like this."

"I'm sorry man. This is the only way. Thanks for trying to save my sister, but it didn't work. At least this way, someone survives…"

I smirked again.

Well, if Fatty got to act like a cliché villain, why couldn't I play the trademark hero?

"Jonah," I said somewhat more quietly than the rest of our conversation had been, which considering that we had almost been shouting at each other only meant that this was the first thing I had said at an ordinary volume since this fiasco started, "how about you stop trying to save me, and we just save these girls?"

He sighed. "I just know that I'm going to wind up regretting this…" he threw a haymaker punch at the guy next to him, slamming him into the brick wall and putting him out of the fight. Did I mention that the sports team Jonah captained basically equates to boxing?

This time when we walked towards the goons my smirk was real, and for some reason I found myself liking our hastily calculated 42 to 2 odds better than the 16 to 1 odds I had thought I had going in to this fight. And then I found myself delivering a monologue and I realized that I was actually enjoying going into a situation where my victory was a logical impossibility. I had a feeling that I would enjoy winning even more, and for some reason it never occurred to me that we might not win.

"I'm sure you remember my friend here mentioning that I'm a genius, right? Well today's lesson is applied sciences, specifically anatomy, biology, chemistry, and physics. Lesson title: what breaks most easily where?" Eleven guys rushed us, I found myself back in my "Analysis Mode," doge here, his miss hits him, strike him here, here, and here to disable left side of body, strike here ruptures eardrum, disables balance, hit him here, leave him temporarily unable to breathe, simultaneous strikes here and here to relieve him of consciousness. At some point in the fight Jules and the other girl I had freed joined in, stabbing their would-be rapists with the roof tile shards. In about two minutes there were eleven guys lying on the ground in varying degrees of pain, blood loss, and consciousness.

However we still found ourselves facing down a Machamp, a Gallade, and a very angry fat man with a hostage. "Kill Them!"

"How long can you hold the Gallade?" He thought about it.

"Thirty seconds? Do you have any disabling attacks for either of these guys?"

"I can put the Machamp down, it might even be easy. The guy's muscle structure indicates a significant lack of speed training. The Gallade on the other hand…" I could only shake my head.

He understood. "Well, at least we went out fighting; maybe we can hold him long enough for the girls to get away."

Neither of us noticed a Spinarak hiding in a broken drainpipe off to our right, or the Murkrow that suddenly took off from the roof behind us.

We were a little focused on the two pokémon who had just decided to charge us.

* * *

The Spinarak had seen everything. She had actually been with the first girl to get attacked, had tried to defend her. She had failed utterly. But now these two boys were going to try – no these two boys were going to die to save her friend and all of those other girls. Well, the least she could do was give them a hand, the one boy, the one who had managed to get the other one to help him save the girls, seemed confident in his ability to take down the Machamp, so she would focus on the Gallade. Put some Poison Stings in him, mark them with her threads to tangle the other pokémon up and show those boys where a hit would do the most damage. Yes, that would do it, as the two fighting types charged the boys she began firing her insidious darts.

* * *

The Murkrow had arrived rather late to the party, only just managing to figure out what was going on. There was a problem in that his kind were not well liked around the market, which kept their numbers down and basically ensured that only fellow Murkrow would listen to him.

However, those boys were going to need help, fast. And so, using all of the cleverness that his species were known for, he utilized the only option available to him. He improvised.

He was used to improvisation; it was a very useful survival skill when you lived from day to day. In this case, improvisation came in the form of a Nightshade attack that leveled seven stalls along one side of the street. He continued his rampage of minor destruction until a team of officials showed up to deal with the problem. Thankfully he had only caused enough of a problem to warrant a Noctowl, rather than a Pigeot. He then proceeded to use Taunt to cover his Mean Look attack, as well as several times in its own right, and then take off in a direction that seemed random to most onlookers.

It wasn't random at all. He was heading right back to the alley where two boys were currently fighting to save themselves and nine girls. With officials in pursuit.

His plan was working perfectly.

* * *

As the two fighting type pokémon rushed us I can honestly say that my only regret was not having managed to save everybody. That and not being able to say goodbye to or take care of my siblings anymore. My parents didn't even cross my mind.

Jonah and I shifted positions so that we were a bit further apart, splitting the charging fighters so that I could have a clear shot at the Machamp. Thirty-two quick pokes and fifteen seconds later, said Machamp was unable to use his arms below the elbows, had no feeling on his right side, and was completely paralyzed from the waist down. A 33rd strike delivered to the base of his skull relieved him of consciousness.

I then turned to see a strange sight, Jonah was unexpectedly holding out against the Gallade, who in profile looked like he had been attacked with a sewing kit. At first I wondered where Jonah had managed to get needles and thread, but I quickly recognized it as a combination of Poison Sting and String Shot. "Jonah! Hit the needles!"

"What are you talking about? What needles?"

Of course, I could see the threads just fine because of the angle I was at, but to Jonah the thread and needles were so thin they might as well have been invisible. Looking around I again entered a brief bout of analysis, which ended in me chain kicking a rock into a rain gutter over the Gallade. I had noticed earlier that the rain gutters in the alley had all been clogged up by various debris. End result: the now wet strings were highly visible, as were the Poison Stings at heir ends.

"Oh, those needles."

* * *

The Gallade was starting to panic; somehow these humans were defeating him. Something was making him slow down, and feel slightly sick and disoriented. He was losing. Against _humans_. That simply shouldn't be possible.

He turned to run, only to find that he couldn't. To his shock, as well as that of everyone present, he was met with a Spinarak, who had seemingly come from nowhere, and who was using Mean Look to ensure that he couldn't run. Poisoned, Drastically Slowed, and all but Paralyzed with terror, the Gallade finally succumbed to the battle and fainted.

* * *

Jonah stood panting over the unconscious Gallade. We were both in a euphoric state bordering on shock. We almost couldn't believe it. We had just won a fight against eleven men and two fully evolved fighting type pokémon.

And then our after-battle high came crashing down.

"Nobody moves or the girl dies!" We looked over to see Fatty holding a handheld laser to the head of the girl I had originally followed here. "Now, I am going to walk out of here, slowly, and none of you are going to follow me!"

As he started backing away a piece of ceramic again flew across the alley in what was an almost exact repeat of my entrance, complete with slicing deep into his arm. Unfortunately this time no major arteries were severed, so he didn't lose his hold on the gun.

Jonah and I looked over our shoulders to see Jules, arm still extended from throwing her piece of tile like a knife. Our heads quickly came back around at the sound of Fatty's voice.

"Alright little girl, you want to die, be my guest." He brought his laser around and fired at her, twice.

* * *

The Murkrow could have fainted in relief, he wasn't too late to save those kids. Now if only that infuriating team of officials would show up and finish things.

The boys had somehow managed to bring down the Machamp and the Gallade, and now only had to deal with the fat weakling human. But…

Something was wrong. He could still sense fear in the air. And then he noticed it, the cowardly human had a weapon. And he was ready to use it on the girl who was tied up and in front of him like a shield. Then one of the girls threw something at him and he was bleeding, not a lot, but it had to have hurt. And then he brought his weapon around and fired at the girl. And so the Murkrow fell back onto his old standby.

He improvised.

* * *

The Noctowl was growing concerned. This suspect's behavior patterns were strange. He should have been either fighting or trying to escape. Instead he had landed a single flurry of attacks and then run, almost like he was leading the Noctowl. He had even managed to land a Mean Look at some point without his noticing until what he was sure was a fair bit later, and now he seemed to be circling something. The Noctowl would have suspected a trap, but for the life of him he couldn't think of why this Murkrow would want to lead him into one, aside from the fact that he seemed more intent on getting where he was headed than on tiring his pursuer out along the way.

And then he reached his target, and saw something he was most definitely not expecting to see, a back alley with a tent, thirteen unconscious and wounded human males, two unconscious fighting type pokémon, eight human females, six of whom were in a state of complete undress, and two more human males and a pokémon apparently facing down another human male, slightly shorter than the others and definitively fat, holding a human female against him like a shield, while the Noctowl's original target was circling over the entire scene. Well at least that was explained now; the Murkrow _had_ been leading him here. Now he just had to wait for his team to arrive, and…

Then he saw something flash across the alley and blood began to flow from the man who was using the girl as a human shield. He said something that the Noctowl couldn't quite make out, and then pointed at her, almost as if to attack her from across the alley. The Noctowl almost laughed, but then he saw it.

The man had a weapon. An _illegal_ weapon.

_Well, this changes things,_ the Noctowl thought, _illegal weapons definitely take priority over a domestic nuisance, not to mention whatever else was going on here._

And so, now that he had a reason that would hold water at his court martial, the Noctowl switched his priorities to the man with the weapon, even as he fired at one of the girls across the alley from him.

* * *

Before either Jonah or I could react, a combined Shadow Ball and Nightshade attack intercepted the laser bursts, resulting in a fairly massive explosion. I would not meet the Noctowl whose Shadow Ball had intercepted the second shot that day, I would only get the full version of his story later, from Jonah and another friend.

When the smoke cleared, we saw that it had even damaged the alley we were standing in, and the spiderweb of cracks spread under Fatty and the girl. And then the ground under them gave out, and they fell into a hole that led to the sewers deep underground. I looked at Jonah and gave him the smirk that was quickly becoming my trademark. "Take care of your sister and the other girls, it looks like the cavalry may have finally arrived."

He grabbed my arm and pulled me into a bro hug, he said my name, the first time he confirmed knowing me since I had showed up, "Be careful."

"I always am."

And then again I performed an act that forever locked me into a destiny of a hero.

I jumped.

* * *

Jonah was just finishing the last knot on the thugs' ropes. He had been tying them up while Jules, the Spinarak and that other girl, the one that that darn hero had first cut the ropes off of, were seeing to the injuries of the traumatized girls, the Spinarak overclocking herself to make them some blankets to preserve what modesty they were able to retain through the ordeal.

The Murkrow hadn't been seen since he had followed the heroic moron into the hole after the explosion. The Noctowl hadn't seemed overly concerned by his suspect's disappearance, given the circumstances, there really wasn't all that much to forgive.

Then the officials arrived, and the medics airlifted the girls out with Altaria to take them to the hospital for a thorough examination.

Before they were taken away though, Jonah was questioned by the officials, he was reprimanded for taking stupid risks, and told that he should have run for help instead of staying to try and protect his sister, as well as for taking matters into his own hands once hero boy showed up, but even they had to grudgingly admit that there was nothing they could do to him after the Noctowl pointed out that he legally had the right to do everything within his power to protect his sister.

Then they asked him about the identity of the other boy involved in the rescue. He almost told them, but before he had even started he was suddenly struck by what the bird pokémon on his right had just said. They would have punished him for taking the law into his own hands if they could have, but they couldn't get him because of his sister's involvement.

Hero boy didn't have that protection.

What's more hero boy was gone, so there was no way for them to positively ID him unless somebody told them. The idiot had risked his live to save those girls, including his sister, and what's more, he now considered him to be a friend. Jonah found that he couldn't turn the guy in. No, he found that he didn't want to turn the guy in.

"I don't know. He didn't give his name." Jules and the Spinarak both blinked at this. They turned to look at the other girls. None of them said anything. Neither did the Noctowl.

"Where is he now?"

"There was an explosion. It punched that hole in the ground and dropped the guy behind this thing down there along with another girl. He told me to take care of these girls and then jumped in after them."

* * *

We were in the sewers for a while, during that time I managed to rescue the girl, make friends with a Murkrow who had none, put down a minor insurrection, settle a territorial dispute, and – eventually – find my way out of the sewers with two friends who I now considered family in all but name.

During that time I was finally formally introduced to Isa and Shaydstryker. I also officially fell head over heels for the girl who would break my heart, heal it, be forever forbidden to me, and die in my arms.

(And since I've used just about every _other_ cliché ever created for storytelling in this section, I might as well use this one too) But that's another story for another time.

On a side note the portions of this part of our legends that are in what is currently known as "Third Person" were originally written by those who were close to me and involved in the incident. I changed the viewpoint to avoid confusion with the portions which I wrote myself.

As I mentioned before, the events of that day would forever define me as a hero in the eyes of others, and the opinion of those who knew what I did bled over to others, shining a new light on me. Let me make one thing clear: I am not a hero.

At best I playact as one, at worst I am a fool who wasn't even able to save the one person in the world who meant the most to him from an ordeal more terrible than any I had ever faced. I am a soldier. I kill when I have to. Because now all I have left is the world that those who we left and have left us helped create.

And so the world is all I have.

And no matter what it takes, I will protect it and everything in it.

So if painting myself as a hero is necessary to fulfill that goal, then so be it. I will be whatever the world needs me to be, whoever it needs me to be. That is why I cast off my name, that is why that seventeen year old died that day, along with all of the other project candidates.

Because I have little choice in who I am. I am simply what the world needs. And that has meant that I am an angel of destruction as often as I am an angel of mercy, if nothing else Atlantis proves that much… but still I stand, and I will protect this world.

No matter what.

I am immortal, unchanging, Immortelle.

I walk among you, living in your cities from time to time.

My name is whispered on the wind and you cannot find a place where no pokémon knows me.

I am

– The Boy in the Leather Jacket

* * *

**A/N: And so, another chapter, some new characters, and a new narration style are added to this story.**

**For those who are slightly confused the alley is shaped like a blocky question mark, with the tent at the end where the dot would normally be. The girls are in the sharp corner right before it heads down to the dot, while Isa and the man who may only ever be known as "Fatty" spend most of the chapter at the next corner along the line. Thus they are almost completely cut off from the outside world, and no help comes until a passing Murkrow decides to provides some.**

**For those who are wondering, yes, I will eventually let you know what all happened in the sewers, those bold numbers at the tops of the last two chapters _were_ the chapter titles, there is a naming system to my chapters, and my not giving any of my main characters real names (or at least revealing them to you yet) is a plot point. It also provides subtle foreshadowing for those who can figure out the primary factor behind a character being given a name. And just because I'm evil and don't believe in spoilers I won't tell you what that system is.**

**At the end of another Chapter and another Author's Note, both of which again much longer than I originally intended them to be when I sat down to type, I find myself again thanking those who have actually taken the time to bother to read this far in my humble work. ****Truly, you readers are the great ones who make this whole world of fanfiction possible. So, truly I say:**

**Thank you for reading,**

**NPP6**


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